


low lights, violent reds

by queenofthestarrrs



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ashes Scene in Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Sad, Sad Ending, Soul Stone (Marvel), This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 20:30:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14504883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthestarrrs/pseuds/queenofthestarrrs
Summary: He breathes one last time.





	low lights, violent reds

His lungs expand for one last time, and they practically burn as they fill with ash and dust and smoke and gunpowder and the smell of decay. He lunged towards to Steve and kept his hand on the trigger of his gun, the only natural reactions he had left. His left connects with the soft Wakandan earth. He sunk a little; it threw him off balance as the mud seemed to swallow up his boot. He made a move to step with his right only to tumble forward. There was a burning sensation that felt entirely like frostbite creeping up his body, creeping up his spine. 

 

His vision was fading out. He kept stumbling forward, eyes steady on Steve in front of him. The burning was intensifying, feeling like it was pulling apart every single cell in his body. He exhaled rapidly. There was a ringing in his ears. His eyes were starting to water, the sting mild compared to the pain that had reached the base of his skull.  

 

“Steve?” 

 

Steve looked at him, studied him, mouth ajar. It looked like he was going to say something. It looked like he was going to scream. His hands had begun to ball into fists. His entire body had gone rigid. He was shaking, his boots digging deeper into the mud. Natasha, from his peripheral, shared the same horrid expression. 

 

Bucky wished he could be poetic, he really did. He wanted to say that the last thing that he had seen was Steve’s big blue eyes staring back at him. He wanted to say that the last thing that he had seen was the sun streaming through the beautiful summer foliage that seemed so unnaturally lush in this country, more beautiful than all other places he has travelled. But he couldn’t; the last thing he had seen before the pain burned so badly his ears rang and his body seemed to blow apart was an eyeful of mud. 

 

* * *

 

 

He fully expected to be dead. 

 

There are only so many times, he figured, that one man could escape death before it just finally caught up to him. He had made his peace with it, all the last of his consciousness seemed to slip away. There was no way he could redeem himself after everything that he had done. He was never ever going to wash away all the blood he had shed; but this seemed appropriate, to die saving the world. 

 

Bucky was genuinely surprised to stir and find himself laying down in a pool of water. The pain he had experience felt like a distant memory. Instead, it was replaced with a sensation he couldn’t describe. It felt like his body was fuzzy, that every part of his body was buzzing with energy. His mouth felt like he had swallowed cotton, and his ears were still ringing. The water didn’t feel cool or warm. It seemed as if it was almost the same temperature as his skin. It felt like being embraced - or drug down. 

 

He scampered to his feet. His vision was still blurred. There were only a few brownish blobs in front of him all surrounded by a sea of soft red. His boots, surprisingly, didn’t sink into the water. They hovered just along its surface. Bucky stumbled a bit. The water splashed, and the sound seemed like it rang on forever. 

 

“Buck,” a voice rang out from the distance. “Is that you, pal?”

 

He took a few steps forward. The splashing seemed to combine with the earlier stirring of the water, ringing forward into infinity.  His eyes came into focus, and off in the distance, he could make out the figure.

 

“Steve?”   
  
As clear as day stood sixteen year old Steve Rogers, standing right on the steps of his mother’s old walkup. He with thin and frail. If Bucky could place him, he’d say it was that December. Steve had, just barely, survived another round of the flu. He had lost several much-needed pounds. He could barely keep down the plain vegetable broth that Bucky’s own mother had sent over to him. Yet, Steve had produced several different paintings that month. He sold them around the neighborhood, and somehow he managed to come up with enough money to buy the Barnes’ a Christmas ham. It was sorely needed that year. Bucky’s brother and father had been laid off from their jobs down at the dock, strikes for the third month in a row. He beamed proudly as Bucky’s sister had placed to the thing on the table and as Bucky’s father insisted that Steve be the one to carve it. 

 

“My God,” Steve looked horrified, staring intently at Bucky’s metal arm. “What the fuck did they do to you, Buck?” 

 

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Bucky instinctively flexed. He watched as each of the fingers, his fingers, wiggled in response. The whole thing reflected the reddish tint of the landscape. “This, it’s just a scratch.” 

 

Steve took one heavy step forward, down to the final step. “Was it worth it?”   
  


The unexpected question takes Bucky by the throat and robs the breathe from his throat. He thought about the excruciating pain he had felt in his life, the indescribable pain he had created in the world. He thought about all the people had killed, the way Maria Stark’s eyes had looked after he had crushed her windpipe. He thought about how Natasha’s eyes flashed the first time he met her, the first time he held a knife up to her throat. In another instance, that seemed to drag on forever, he thought about the extreme kindness the people of Wakanda had shown him, entirely undeserved. He thought of the gentleness of Steve’s, the real Steve, eyes. He thinks what he would have become if he had never left Brooklyn. 

 

“It was because it brought me back to you.” 

 

He started to realize he was sinking by the time the water had swallowed up his ankles. There was no pain this time. There was no fear, no desperate scrambling. The water was still warm, still comforting. It eased the tension in his body, soothed him nearly to sleep. Steve didn’t sink with him. He simply watched with his kind and somber eyes as the water rose and rose and rose. 

 

“I’ll see you again soon, Bucky. I promise.” Steve’s lone voice, earnest and sure, called out, ringing and ringing just like the splashes of water had. 

  
It was the last thing Bucky heard before the water blurred his vision and filled his ears. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> so that was a rough movie, my dudes.


End file.
